US Cyberweapons Are a Growing Disappointment Against ISIS

In recent years, the US government has become increasingly willing to deploy cyber-weapons abroad, repeatedly attacking Iran’s civilian nuclear program, and regularly trying to throw wrenches into North Korea’s missile development program with malware and sabotage.

Cyber Command has been throwing the best of their arsenal at ISIS too, with officials in both the Obama and Trump Administrations making clear that stopping ISIS’ Internet campaign is a top priority. The Pentagon publicly announced an offensive cyber campaign against ISIS a little over a year ago. So far, it’s not accomplishing much.

Despite US Cyber Command being heavily funded and officials often bragging about their advanced capabilities, officials say that they’ve seen the campaign as a significant disappointment, saying successful attacks are proving a lot harder in practice than they were in theory, and they’re not seeing any “major” blows.

Indeed, the best they’ve ever managed to accomplish were to get a few ISIS administrators’ passwords, bringing a collection of videos down off the Internet temporarily, only to see the same content restored on a different server not long after. Keeping ISIS off the Internet remains their goal, but an elusive one.

Author: Jason Ditz

As anyone familiar with the hacking community and file-sharing in general knows, this is an utterly impossible task short of shutting down the Internet. They are proven to be morons by even trying. Look how long the governments have been trying to shut down the Pirate Bay Bittorrent site – it’s still here.

Compromising a password is meaningless. Unless you put the admin in JAIL, he just gets a new password, a new server, restores his site from backup and on he goes. If you put the admin in jail, a new admin appears and does the same thing as the old one.

It’s Whack-a-Mole times a thousand. Ridiculous to even try.

curmudgeonvt

But someone is usually making a lot of $$$$ trying to “whack that mole” so I don’t expect this kind of insanity to be curtailed. How long has the DoD been paying $600 for a toilet seat? 1980’s? I’m guessing that that toilet seat is more expensive now than then.

Government spending is not about getting the best deal for the taxpayer’s dollars, it’s about spending as much as they can…those toilet seats are undoubtedly made in some Congress Critter’s district and god help you if you attempt to interrupt that food chain.